posted on 2018-02-12, 15:09authored byMartin Wegelin, Daniel Gechter, Stephan Hug, Abdullah Mahmud, Abdul Motaleb
The serious threat to the health of millions of people through consumption of arsenic-rich groundwater in Bangladesh calls for immediate action on various levels. One of these actions is be the development of a low-cost and simple arsenic removal method available to every household. The development of alternative water sources and/or the installation of larger arsenic removal units will take more time due to logistic and financial constraints. Currently existing small-scale arsenic removal procedures require chemicals
that are either not easily available and/or affect water taste and odour.
Solar oxidation and removal of arsenic (SORAS) is a simple method that uses irradiation of water with sunlight in PET- or other UV-A transparent bottles to reduce arsenic levels from drinking water. The SORAS method is based on photochemical oxidation of As(III) followed by precipitation or filtration
of As(V) adsorbed on Fe(III)oxides as shown in Fig. 1. Groundwater in Bangladesh naturally contains Fe(II) and Fe(III) and therefore, SORAS could reduce arsenic contents and would be available to everyone at virtually no cost. It could be a water treatment method used at household level to treat
small quantities of drinking water.
History
School
Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering
Research Unit
Water, Engineering and Development Centre (WEDC)
Published in
WEDC Conference
Citation
WEGELIN, M. ... et al, 2000. SORAS - a simple arsenic removal process. IN: Pickford, J. (ed). Water, sanitation and hygiene - Challenges of the Millennium: Proceedings of the 26th WEDC International Conference, Dhaka, Bangladesh, 5-9 November 2000, pp.255-258.
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